After all the workdone recently in comedy to deconstruct traditional male roles in movies and redefine the hairier gender as pasty ineffectual schlubs, It’s interesting how quickly the pendulum swinging back to reassert the baser, predatory and combative elements of masculinity (see “Tropic Thunder” and “Pineapple Express”). Seth Rogan, who’s ubiquity onscreen could lead one to believe he might be the only lead actor working in contemporary comedy, has quite effectively staked his claim as the contemporary king of Pasty Schlub Mountain. But lately, he seems to be aggressively attempting to trade the laconically wisecracking fuzzy bear image he’s made such bank on for a far more bitter, bloodier, brutish version.

Seeing Rogan in his latest role as Ronnie Barnhardt, a wildly unbalanced chief of security lording over a woefully generic suburban mall, is kind of like watching Teddy Ruxpin pop in a Marilyn Manson tape and open fire on an elementary school lunchroom. It seems so wrong on so many levels. Like a latter day Travis Bickle, Rogan’s Ronnie is angry, broken, dysfunctional, confused, disassociated and, as it turns out, actually quite a menace to himself and those around him. And he’s a complete asshole on top. He routinely loses his mind with the mallies he’s supposedly protecting, thundering promises of bloody murder while occasionally bashing their heads in. He’s a villain in every way, but like all the very best villains, he clearly believes he’s the hero.

Without knowing for sure, it’s impossible to tell if writer/director Jodi Hill (who previously gave us “The Foot Fist Way”) did this intentionally. Rogan’s casting could easily be seen as a stroke of trickster genius, turning the audiences presumptions about Rogan entirely inside out, but by the same token, it could be one of the film’s greatest failures. With the depths to which this character malfunctions, it can be difficult to even qualify his story as a comedy. Sure, there are some laughs, but it’s a queasy, nervous kind of laughter. Don’t be fooled by the trailers, which imply an “Anchorman” style screwball take on blustering incompetents taking positions of petty authority too seriously and the wackiness that ensues. For better or worse, “Observe and Report” is a right challenge to keep up with, swinging haphazardly between familiar comic setups into positively troubling territories of moral iniquity that few horror films could match.

And, once again, this may be the filmmaker’s goal. The argument could be made that the flick’s turbulent shifts in tone could echo our hero’s complete lack of inner balance. In fact, Ronnie’s capacity and demonstrated talent for skull caving violence appears to escalate in direct proportion to the amount of time he spends off his meds. Abandoned in a treacherous corner of town by the cop (Ray Liotta) who’s been stealing Ronnie’s thunder in the attempted apprehension of a parking lot flasher, he promptly and efficiently decimates a crew of tattooed gangstas who appear to protect their tweenage crack salesman—but he returns to the station, suspiciously enough, with only the child in hand and a boisterous assertion that there are now “six dead crack-heads on the street.” There appears to be no investigation into this claim, and indeed nearly no visible consequences rendered by any of Ronnie’s brutal shenanigans. Could these instances actually be an expression of Ronnie’s grand delusions breaking through the narrative of the film itself? A sublime application of the song, “Where is my Mind” toward the movie’s conclusion seems like a direct reference to a similar moment in “Fight Club,” which also featured a main character immersed in a self constructed sea of falsehood and hallucination.

One way or another, the berserk shotgun execution of “Observe and Report” makes for an uncommon, almost confrontational challenge to audience expectation, but will certainly leave you picking the buckshot from your opinion for some time.